Integrating Photosynthetic Microbial Desalination Cell with Coconut Shell

Electrode and Electrodialysis to Provide Clean Water for East Indonesia’s

Islets

Agusta Indahing Tyas1,a, Elisabeth1,b,Jonathan Megan2,c, and Yohannes de BrittoHirmadito Prastito2,d

1
Chemical Engineering, Engineering, Universitas Indonesia, Kampus Baru UI Depok, Jawa Barat, 16424, Indonesia
2
Civil Engineering, Engineering, Universitas Indonesia, Kampus Baru UI Depok, Jawa Barat, 16424, Indonesia

*e-mail: aagusta.indah@yahoo.co.id, belisabeth.hosea@gmail.com, cjonathanmegan190695@yahoo.com,

d
hirmadito@gmail.com

Abstract— Islets in East Indonesia are lack of clean water with only two main sources of clean water,
which are shallow well and precipitation reservoir. The depletion of reservoir happens in drought season
and occurs because ground water undergoes seawater intrusion. Human cannot consume saline water for
a long period. Accordingly, clean water is necessary for people in stressed water region. There are few
researches on Photosynthetic Microbial Desalination Cell (PMDC) to desalinate seawater. This study is
working on modification and integration of PMDC with Electrodialysis (ED) to achieve higher efficiency of
reducing salt conductivity in seawater. Each of PMDC chambers consists of algae in cathode chamber,
organic waste in anode chamber, and saline water in the middle chamber. The PMDC reduced
conductivity of salt water by 84.2% sodium and 58.25% chloride. Percentage of NaCl left then processed
with ED to meet the potable water standard. This integration is low in construction and operational cost
and also maximizes the utilization of seawater, coconut shell, and organic waste in islets. Integration of
PMDC with coconut shell carbon electrode and ED is a promising solution for this problem. This will
enable local citizens in islets to increase their self-sustained life.

Keywords— algae; coconut shell carbon; electrodialysi; PMDC

technology is environmental friendly, nevertheless has

I. INTRODUCTION
As the high growth of world population and
urbanization these past years, water demand is now
exceeding supply in many developed and developing
countries. Many technologies have been developed to
produce clean water in many areas. But, in some small
areas, such as islets, clean water is still limited. It is
because the main sources in these areas are just
precipitation reservoir and ground water shallow well.
Even more, the low rainfall makes the precipitation
reservoirs are not sufficient, and also the ground water
shallow wells are exposed by intrusion of sea. These
problems drive us an idea to produce plenteous clean
water continuously to comply the needs of clean water in
islets.
Desalination technologies will help for producing
clean water. It produces clean water by using saline water
as its resource. Currently, the most applicable and
cheapest technology to process saline water is
Photosynthetic Microbial Desalination Cell. It produces
clean water and electricity at the same time by using
wastewater from organic waste as its anode medium,
algae as its cathode medium, and coconut shell carbon as
its electrode. By using organic and waste products, this
high salinity removal efficiency and electricity
production. We also increase the performance by using
coconut shell carbon as electrode. Coconut shell carbon is
effectively removing more sodium and chloride in saline
water. It will be more efficient because Indonesia is in
tropical region that will support the algae to do
photosynthesis. Islets have many coconut trees to get, so it
is easier to create the electrode.
Electrodialys is integrated in this system in purpose to
have lower salinity of water. This integration is needed
because the water which is produced by PMDC present in
medium salinity in which it cannot be consumed by
human. The salinity can be reduced by 35% by ED. ED
operation requires energy which will be supplied by the
electricity which produced in PMDC. This system is
affordable because of low price in providing material and
operational costs.
II. MATERIALS AND METHODS
Three rectangular chamber of MDC with dimension of
5x4x1 m was built in the ground. The volume of cathode
chamber, desalination chamber, and anode chamber are 7
m3 each. Anion exchange membrane separates anode
chamber with desalination chamber, while cation
exchange membrane separates cathode chamber with
desalination chamber. Both membranes were
preconditioned by soaking them in 5% NaCl solution at
400C for 24 hours and rinsing them with deionized water
for membrane hydration and expansion.
Chlorella vulgaris was cultivated in cathode chamber
as bio-cathode because of its ability to do photosynthesis,
grow fast, and produce high lipid concentration.
Wastewater used in anode chamber is from organic wastes
that were produced daily.
Coconut shell electrode is produced according to steps
on journal cited [1]. The starting materials were manually
chosen, cleaned with deionized water, dried at 110°C for
48 h and ground using a roller mill and sieved to a size
range of 3.35–4.75 mm and stored in sealed containers for
experimentation. The coconut shells were heated up to a
carbonization temperature of 1000°C at a heating rate of
10°C/min with conventional heating and were held for 2 h
at the carbonization temperature under N2 gas flow
(100cm3/min). After carbonization, the samples were
cooled to room temperature under N2 flow (100cm3/min).
The activation experiments were carried out in a
microwave tubular furnace.
Approximately 25 g of the pre-carbonized material
was placed into reactor and set to the desired temperature
along with the N2 flow rate at 200 cm3/min. Upon
reaching the desired temperature the gasifying agent was
allowed into the reactor at a desired flowrate.
Approximately 5 to 7 min of time was required to
raise the temperature of sample to the desired temperature
of 900°C CO2 activation (600 cm3/min): to assess the
effect of activation time at 900 °C.
After the activation, the carbon is trapped in
cylindrically made iron nest with diameter of 0,2 m and 1
m high. The electrode is then placed inside the anode
chamber.
Electrodyalisis is made of bipolar membrane. Bipolar
membrane is a cation-permeable layer on one side and
anion-permeable layer on the other side. Bipolar
membranes have advantages in reducing the high
electrical resistance that occur in common electrodialysis
monopolar membrane spaces. In addition, deionized water
conductivity is very low. Ions that have been separated by
bipolar membrane, which is left is just a proton and
hydroxyl ions in deionized water through the membrane.
Electric current can only occur when there are protons and
hydroxyl ions. Therefore, monopolar membranes in
common electrodialysis separated by distance then
brought closer to each other to form a bipolar membrane.
H+ and OH- ions that exist because the dissociation of
water will be pushed out because the electric current.
Bipolar membranes can have low electrical resistance
when using high acid and base concentration as a fixed
charge. Bipolar membranes should possess high
permeability to avoid acids and bases purity decrease, so
the water will obtain properties as neutral as possible.
Bipolar membranes have a fairly high energy efficiency in
dissociating water to produce acid and alkaline.
Theoretically, bipolar membrane with a 100% perm-
selectivity in producing 1 M solution of acid and alkaline
at 25 0 C have a potential difference of 0.83 volts.
III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Microbial Desalination Cell (MDC) is a technology
developed from Microbial Fuel Cell (MFC). MFC has two
chambers while MDC has three chambers that function as
a cathode chamber, saline water chamber, and anode
chamber. The reaction happens in both MFC and MDC is
a bio-electrochemical reaction where oxidation of organic
compounds on the anode supplies the electrons and
protons that reduce oxygen on the cathode [12]. This
reaction produces little amount of electricity as electron
flow between the two electrodes.
The middle chamber of MDC is used to place saline
water which is parted by anion exchange membrane
(AEM) and cation exchange membrane (CEM) with the
other chambers. MDC used a bio-electrochemical system
which needs a high operating cost as it uses platina as
catalyst and toxic chemical oxidants, permanganate and
ferricyanide as cathode. An alternative solution to replace
the cathode as bio-cathode has been reported in [13, 14].
Therefore, in anode, wastewater from organic waste is
used due to having degrading microbes as biocatalyst.
Organic compounds which are degraded will produce
electrons that travel through external circuit from anode to
cathode.
PMDC is a technology used to produce electricity
from wastewater organic waste by removing salt from
saline water [11]. PMDC adapts MDC system in which it
has three chambers each for bio-cathode, saline water, and
wastewater as anode. Algae was grown in bio-cathode
chamber and it grew by doing photosynthesis and
produced electricity 1.1 W/m3[11]. Clean water is also
produced by 30.3±0.85% salt water removal [11].
Algae in bio-cathode chamber consumed carbon
dioxide (CO2), which is produced by wastewater
degradation, and used sunlight to photosynthesize and
produce oxygen (O2) as electron acceptor and other
organic compounds. Electrons produced in anode chamber
will be catch by O2 in cathode and produce electricity.
Negative and positive ions in saline water will move
through the membranes which suit the potential, Na+ ion
will move towards CEM, while Cl- ion will travel to
AEM. Ion flow happens because there is potential
difference between anode and cathode chamber.

Fig. 1. Schematic of the Photosynthetic Microbial Desalination Cell
(Kokobian, 2015)
Meanwhile, activated carbons are commercially used
as an electrode material for MDC because of their high
surface area, favorable pore size distribution and good
electrical conductivity. Activated carbon is an attractive
option because of its abundance, cost effective and
environment friendly in nature [5]. In addition, the
carbonaceous material offers good biocompatibility and
good chemical stability [3]. Research is on full swing to
find materials that can be widely used to improve bacterial
adhesion and electron transfer from bacteria to the
electrode surface [7].
The carbonization process prior to activation enriches
the carbon content with removal of volatile matter which
creates the initial porosity in the char [1]. This indicates
that chars produced at 1000°C offer higher potential to
produce activated carbon of greater adsorption capacity.
The porosity is generated due to the conversion of
hemicellulose, cellulose and lignin in coconut shells by
the process of dehydrating, linkage breaking reactions, the
structural ordering process of the residual carbon and
finally polymerization reaction [4].
The systematic order of breaking down of main
components of biomass is: 200–800°C (hemicellulose),
260–350°C (cellulose) and 280–500°C (lignin). 80% of
the total weight loss takes place between 260°C and
400°C, which may vary between 40% lignin to about 80%
cellulose because of the evolution of H2O, CO2 and
volatile hydro-carbon species from fragmentation reaction
of the poly-aromatic constituents [6].
The high surface and the favorable pore size of the
carbon electrode letting the bacteria works on their
metabolism well through their growing nanowires. It leads
to electrons production in the anode compartment which
then transferred from anode to the cathode. Electrons from
the desalination chamber (middle compartment) move to
the anode compartment due to the lack of electrons in
anode compartment. The larger amount the electron
displaced, the larger it requires the replacing electron
supply in order to balance the ionic solution. It
consequently initiates rapid movement of electrons.
Salinity is reduced due to electrons movement from the
desalination chamber. Therefore, produce greater
electricity and reduced much of the salt conductivity.
The results indicate that there is substantial
improvement in desalination rates with the use of coconut
shell carbon. Salt removal efficiencies of up to 90% [9,
10] have been recorded in laboratory work, however much
higher removal efficiencies are required to produce
drinking-quality water.
Passing through the PMDC, water is then processed
by electrodyalisis. Electrodialysis is one of water
purification system by separating the ions dissolved in the
water to be separated from the water. Besides aiming to
purify the water, electrodialysis also aims to gain acids
and bases as the result. In the form of minerals or salts,
ions have properties that easily dissolves in water. In order
to separate ions from water, electrodialysis can be
performed. Electrodialysisis economical in the process of
desalination of brackish water and sea water for various
purposes. Electrodialysis has significant benefits for
seawater desalination process on islets in Indonesia where
the desalination process used to apply PMDC system
(PhotosyntheticMicrobial Desalination Cell).
The working principle of electrodialysis is to separate
the ions in solution by relying on their ability to pass
through the membrane. The membranes used are in the
form of bipolar membrane. Ions can pass through the ion
membrane by its movement because of differences in
electrical potential of the electrode. Work of
electrodialysis depends on the salt dissolved in the water,
either containing positive ions or negative ions. Ion will
move towards the electrode of opposite charge. Positive
ions will move towards the anode, while the negative ions
will move towards the cathode. There are two types of
membrane, the negative and positive membrane called
monopolar membrane. But the membrane used this time is
bipolar membrane that has negative membrane on one
side and positive membrane on the other side. If ions are
attempting to pass the membrane with the same charge
property, then ions cannot pass and move towards to
channel installed. However, when ions are attempting to
pass through the membrane with different properties, ions
can pass. In the end, the ions will successfully move
towards their respective electrodes.
The electrodialysis process in its use will be formed
plaques on the membrane. The plaque itself would be easy
to be eliminated by changing the electric current direction
through the electrode. The plaque itself will be lifted and
dissolved in water. This is an advantage to the community
on islet for easy maintenance.
Excess bipolar electrodialysis membrane [17]
including: requires a lower cost because in one
electrodialysis cell with two electrodes can be filled with
lots of ion exchange membrane than using monopolar
membrane, membrane saline solution can be used to
produce acid and alkaline. Electricity used for
electrodialysis is generated from PMDC. Electricity
generated from the PMDC is equal to 1.1 W/m3.
Furthermore, the water that has been through the process
of electrodialysis becomes clean water as the result.
 IV. CONCLUSION
Integration of PMDC with carbon based electrode and
Electrodyalisis would be a probable implemented idea to
produce clean water for islets in Indonesia in order to
supply their water demands. It is low cost, easily made,
operated and maintained, and also it is environmental
friendly for it is reused the coconut shell waste, and
organic waste.
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